Ultimate Guide + 3 Things

You Didn’t Know About

Feedback on Upwork

Your Upwork feedback is crucial to building a successful freelance career. Based on 7+ years of our agency experience with 40+ team members, we’ve developed a working strategy on how to get perfect feedback.

Firstly, there are 2 types of Upwork feedback on the platform: public and private.

Private feedback is not shown in the profile. The clients generally answer 2 questions. Firstly, it's why the contract is ended. And the second is how likely they are to recommend you on a scale from 1 to 10. Note that, private feedback can not be changed after submission. Upwork doesn’t really provide much information about private feedback. However, there have been rumors that private feedback below 9 can affect your Job Success Score.

Public feedback on Upwork consists of 2 parts: the star rating and text feedback.

Upwork calculates the star rating based on the client’s responses about you on 1-5 star scale on the following categories: Skills, Quality of work, Availability, Adherence to Schedule, Communication, and Cooperation.

While it officially says that anything above 4 stars is good, our experience has proven it differently. In practice, the only good feedback is 5 stars, and anything below 5 is not good (and anything below 4.5 is terrible).

It makes sense to explain to your client how it works before closing the contract. BUT, be careful! Upwork can ban your account for feedback manipulation, which is against its Terms of Use if the client claims you pushed them to give 5 starts. At the same time, what you can do is one of the following:

Tell the client that you enjoyed working with them and will 5 stars in any event. But you hope the client will do the same;
Ask for positive feedback if the client is happy with your cooperation, but don’t specify anything about 5 stars. Remember to do it professionally, don’t be too demanding or annoying.

Overall, text feedback only counts, starting with 4 letters. So, an emoji or just “OK” won’t be considered as text feedback at all. And if there is no text feedback, Upwork will consider the feedback as negative even if it has 5 stars. So, getting text feedback is crucial.

What if the client gave you less than 5 stars or didn’t leave text feedback?

Write them a message asking if they were happy with the work or what was wrong.
If the client is actually happy, you need to respectfully explain to them how important those 5 stars and text feedback are.
If the client agrees, you then enable them to change feedback in the contract details. The client will have 14 days to do so, and you can only enable this feature once.

If you want to get the most of Upwork, it’s good to use all the functionalities it provides. Today we’ll tell you about 3 things most freelancers don’t know (or just don’t do) with their feedback on Upwork.

1. Get testimonials from past clients outside Upwork.

Scroll down in your profile and you’ll see a section with testimonials where you can get feedback from clients you worked with outside Upwork. This could be really useful to those who are new on the platform and don’t have any contracts yet. Also, showcasing client testimonials can strengthen your profile (add +5% to it.)

How to add testimonials:

Go to Settings – My Profile – Testimonials.
Click on “Request a testimonial” and enter your client’s contact information, including a link to their LinkedIn account (this is a must).
Wait for the client to leave a feedback and then for Upwork support to approve it.

2. Ask client for Upwork feedback before closing the contract.

This feature is useful if you have many long-term contracts. For contracts that are open 30+ days you can request feedback from clients to show on your profile. This feedback does not impact your job success score, but it shows to your prospective clients that your clients are happy to you don’t have to wait for the contract to end.

How to request feedback:

Go to the contract page – choose Details.
Scroll to feedback and click “Request feedback”.

3. Ask your clients for good feedback.

This is super important because many clients don’t pay much attention to text feedback or leaving 5 stars. At the same time, only 5 starts and text feedback longer that 4 characters are considered by Upwork as good. So, before closing a contract, communicate the importance of this to your clients.

How to ask for good feedback:

Explain how important text feedback is for your future freelance career.
Write the client that you will leave 5 starts to them and hope they will do the same.
Write a sample feedback for the client that they can use.
Do not push the clients for 5 stars as this is a violation of Upwork TOC.

P.S. And if the client left the feedback worse feedback that you expected, we made a guide on what to do and how to fix it in our past post about Upwork feedback.

Don’t know how to write good feedback on Upwork for clients?

Here is a good template you can use in the future, so that it doesn’t take you too much time and effort the next time you close a contract, but maintain great relationships with the client. Just fill in relevant info in the blanks.

It was a great pleasure working with *Name*. He/she is a very responsive and responsible client, always there to answer the questions and provides clear requirements and expectations. We developed (design/development/content etc) according to the business goals, and even were able to (insert a unique achievement here). Wish you all the best and great success with your projects, *Name*. Thank you, *your name*

How SEO Is Changing in the Age of AI

21-10-2025

AI is transforming search. Learn how SEO evolves into AEO and GEO — where visibility means being cited in AI answers, not just ranked in results.

Learn more

Keeping the Human Mind Sharp When AI Can Do It All

16-10-2025

AI makes work easier, but thinking harder. Learn how to stay creative, critical, and human in the age of intelligent machines.

Learn more

AI Workslop: Why Businesses Pay Freelancers to Fix AI

07-10-2025

AI speeds up work but often creates “workslop” - results that look complete yet lack value. Freelancers are the ones turning them into quality.

Learn more

Disney Creative Strategy: How Ideas Become Reality

03-10-2025

Disney Creative Strategy: dream, plan, critique — a tool to guide ideas from imagination to real-world results.

Learn more

Upwork Boost: Increasing Freelancer Profile Visibility

29-09-2025

Discover how Upwork’s Available Now badge and Profile Boost work, their costs, pros and cons, and which boost is best for freelancers or agencies.

Learn more

10 Posts to Help You Get Started on Upwork

29-09-2025

We’ve gathered a set of articles to guide you through the essentials — from setting up your profile to building long-term client relationships.

Learn more

Etcetera summer 2025 report

26-09-2025

Etcetera summer 2025 results: quiet season, new team members, shifting Upwork rules, and plans for an active autumn.

Learn more

Upwork Feedback: a trust tool you should learn to read and write

22-09-2025

Upwork feedback is more than stars — it builds trust, shapes reputation, and guides choices. Learn how to read, request, and write reviews effectively

Learn more